Lisa Dickenson Q&A

Lisa Dickenson is the brains behind one of my favourite Christmas books EVER. The Twelve Dates Of Christmas is such a fantastic, festive read and my review will tell you just why I loved it! Lisa dropped by to answer some questions all about her novel and her publishers have also VERY kindly offered me TWO copies of The Twelve Dates Of Christmas to give away!

The Twelve Dates Of Christmas is your first novel published in paperback *squeals*!! For those who haven’t had the chance to pick it up yet, can you tell us a little about what the novel is about?

I’d love to!  It’s about spending Christmas in London with someone you have forgotten chemistry with,  Claudia has something unexpected happen at the start of the holiday season, and subsequently her Christmas becomes a whirlwind of dates and decision making.  There’s plenty of festive fun, Quality Street and sparkles!

Twelve Dates has some super funny moments in it – were any of these based upon real-life moments that you’ve experienced?

Haha, snippets, yes, but thankfully not the majority of the bad dates!  Most situations stem from a nugget of truth that I’ve turned into a story, such as my friends and I did meet a Billy Kennedy-lookalike barman once, and my husband and I love visiting Covent Garden around Christmas.  And my real-life friend Ellie did whip off all her underwear at a winter wedding – it was actually my winter wedding, and she was my bridesmaid 🙂

Claudia is a total babe – she’s one of my fave fictional best friends ever. Was she a hard character to write?  

Ahh, thank you!  She loves you too!  She was easy to write – mainly because there’s a lot of me in there!  One aspect that was really hard was the initial heartbreak scenes.  Part of me didn’t want her to be a flakey wet-wipe in front of Seth, but at the same time I thought, well we’d all love to be That Girl who thinks of all the right things to say and acts in a way that makes passers-by cheer, but I wanted to make her real.  In that moment I decided she’d be more realistic if she fumbled her words and the tears to spill out though she didn’t want them to.  Sometimes building up courage and strength takes a bit of time after a blow, and that’s okay.

If you could have the ULTIMATE Christmas date, where would you go, what would you do and most importantly, who would you want to date? (Don’t worry, I won’t tell your husband.)

It would have to be something mega-festive like a Christmas lights switch-on or a wintery show, like The Nutcracker.  And if I wasn’t going with my husband I’d go with Beyoncé, obvs,

Christmas is totally about eating until your jeans pop…what is your favourite Christmas food?

Agreed.  Fave Christmas food = chocolate oranges, and lashings of them!

If you could only listen to one Christmas song on repeat foreverrrr. Which one would it be?

Just one?  Waaahhh!  I’m going to go with Last Christmas by Wham because I adore every cheesy bit of it, including the music video.

And, lastly, Christmas cake or mince pies? 

Mince pies!  I love those bad boys.

Give Lisa a follow on Twitter, check out her super awesome website and make sure to buy, borrow or steal (ok, don’t steal, that’s bad) The Twelve Dates Of Christmas! 

Now, to be in with a chance of winning ONE of TWO copies of The Twelve Dates Of Christmas, leave a comment below telling me what your ULTIMATE Christmas date would be. Closing date is December 15th and hopefully, if the postal service co-operates, the winners will have their book in time for Christmas! (Sorry, UK only)